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Some left disappointed even with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's crack-cocaine confession

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he will continue his job as the mayor of Toronto and apologizes during a press conference at Toronto City Hall on Tuesday after admitting earlier in the day that he has smoked crack cocaine.Photo: Michelle Siu/For Postmedia News

All those who have been preparing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s political coffin lo these many months are left, rather like the long-suffering hockey fans of this city, with nothing but the bitter ash of premature celebration in their mouths.

It was as though the boys on the fictional island in Lord of the Flies missed when they threw the great rock at Piggy, and that as they were about to bring the pale, plump fellow down, didn’t he duck and live another day to bear their taunts.

Just when it appeared Ford was finally fully cornered, mostly by his own belated admissions — that why yes, now that you ask in the right manner, he has as it happens smoked crack cocaine, probably “in one of my drunken stupors,” and that further, he’s as curious about that darned crack video as everyone else because he wants to see just how addled was his state because he was so wasted he has no actual memory — the mayor instead late Tuesday announced he was staying on.

With the earlier-in-the-day blockbuster confession that he’d smoked crack, Ford then told a room stuffed with reporters, “I know I embarrassed everyone in this city, and I will be forever sorry.”

If the crack confession appeared unscripted and to take everyone by surprise, including Ford’s own lawyer and staff (some of whom were earlier in the day optimistically talking about “lowering the temperature” at city hall), the deliberate announcement that followed was probably more of a shocker because in the four hours between the two events, most observers and pundits were confidently predicting the mayor would at least step aside to seek help, if not outright resign.

Only Dennis Morris, lawyer for Ford and his family, guessed right, telling CP24 moments before his client spoke the second time, “All I know, and you should know by virtue of his past, I’d be surprised if he wants to leave his job.”

As the mayor began speaking to the whirr of all those cameras — it sounded for all the world like the dark noise the late William Golding described as “the steady shrill cheering of the tribe” — he described his earlier-in-the-day confession as “the right thing to do” and said he felt “like a thousand pounds have been lifted off my shoulders.

“I cannot explain how difficult this was to do,” Ford said, adding, with that weird verbal tic he has of slowly repeating words to underline his sincerity, “I hope, I hope, that nobody, that nobody, has to go through what I have gone through.

“I know what I did was wrong, and admitting it was the most difficult and embarrassing thing I have ever had to do.

“Folks,” he promised, “I have nothing left to hide.”

For a guy with little recollection of his own behaviour, with media lawyers winning a round the same day in the court fight to release to the public the blacked-out parts of the massive search warrant that last week detailed the five-month-long Toronto police surveillance of Ford’s friend and sometime driver, Sandro Lisi, and the mayor himself, that was a profoundly risky pledge.

Ford closed his remarks by saying, “I love my job. I love my job, and I love this city, and I love saving taxpayers money and I love being your mayor.”

He said he wants Torontonians to decide, in the October 2014 election, “whether they want Rob Ford to be their mayor.”

“Again,” he said, “I sincerely, sincerely, sincerely apologize.”

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford addresses media at City Hall in Toronto, Tuesday, Nov.5, 2013. Ford has offered another emotional apology for his “mistakes” but says he loves his job and has no plans to step aside.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

His final line, before leaving the podium, was, “God bless the people of Toronto,” the same signoff he and his brother, city Coun. Doug Ford, use often on their weekly radio show.

The line provoked derisive laughter from the enormous crowd of media, and if that is unsurprising in a determinedly secular society like Canada — unlike in America, where politicians routinely invoke such blessings — it may have also hinted at the nature of the gap between Ford Nation and the mayor’s natural enemies. It’s wrong for him to embarrass the office and the city; it’s fine for the press to sneer at him when he invokes a corn-pone blessing.

(Doug Ford himself set the first fireworks off Tuesday, criticizing Police Chief Bill Blair for confirming the existence of the crack video. Coun. Ford is saying he will ask for the chief’s behaviour to be investigated, has suggested he should step aside and hints at a conspiracy. I doubt that, but suspect the police chief, as have so many, simply decided on some internal level that it was time to add a push toward the mayor doing what the collective wisdom says is the right thing.)

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford gets set to address the media at City Hall in Toronto, Tuesday, Nov.5, 2013 as his brother, city councillor Doug Ford, looks on. Ford has offered another emotional apology for his “mistakes” but says he loves his job and has no plans to step aside.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

It was to Ford’s back that the shouted questions that will plague him and this city for the foreseeable future began with a howl: “Why won’t you resign?” and “Will you address the racism and homophobia in the video?”, the latter a reference to remarks Ford reportedly made while smoking crack.

Did the mayor, in the words of his lawyer, begin to “lance the boil” with his confessional, and set in motion his curious version of rehabilitation? Perhaps, but bets are the boys on the island are even now looking for other rocks to throw at the guy one of his constituents, interviewed on the tube Tuesday, kindly described as “delightfully human.” The delight may be wearing awfully thin, but oh my, the humanity is undeniable.

As the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer — and wouldn’t that be a test of the group’s code of confidentiality if Ford were to show up for a meeting — puts it, “God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.”